FORT BEND COUNTY, TEXAS — Fort Bend County residents affected by Hurricane Harvey and the recent floodwaters are hard at work cleaning out their homes and property after the storm. County Emergency Management Officials will begin collecting residents storm debris starting this week.

The County will coordinate debris removal efforts for all unincorporated areas and with our partnering jurisdictions. It is important that residents abide by the debris sorting guidelines provided at http://fbceom.org/debris. These guidelines include separating your debris into categories (Separating Your Debris) never using trash or plastic bags for this debris, placing debris piles at the curb or roads edge, and restrictions on county officials entering private property.

“Please put your debris as close to the curb and the sidewalk as you possibly can.”, said Marc Grant, Fort Bend County’s Debris Management Coordinator, “If you put it past the sidewalk, we cannot go on private property to pick up your debris. If you have more debris past the sidewalk we will pick up as much as we can and then we will have to come back once you’ve moved the rest of your debris to the curb line.”

Grant added that if you have a roadside ditch in front of your property, follow similar guidelines but treat the ditch like you would the sidewalk. Place your debris along the roadside so that it does not impede traffic or the flow of water in the bottom of the ditch. Items that are on your private property side will not be picked up on the first trip through by our trucks, but we will return once you have moved the remaining debris out to the roadside.

The restriction of the use of trash bags to contain the debris is something many residents may not know. Storm debris is compiled and processed differently than normal household garbage, and bagged storm debris will not be picked up by county debris removal trucks. If you have already placed debris at your roadside, please reference the guidelines at fbceom.org and remove trash bags from these debris piles.

It is also important not to park vehicles in locations that block our access to debris piles. If a vehicle is parked on a roadside in front of a debris pile, workers will have to move on and return at a later date to retrieve the debris.

Fort Bend County officials will be working hard for many weeks to collect and properly dispose of the Hurricane Harvey debris. We greatly appreciate your help in making this process a success.